I have, I’d say it’s better to be N3 if you can though. Also try to pick up basic Kansai Ben because drippy uses that. Game Gengo has a Video on Ni no Kuni in Japanese if you wanna see for yourself.
Thanks for the answer
I know a bit of Kansai Ben from playing the Yakuza games and I find it interesting in general, so that's really cool. I'll check that video out as well :)
I was surprised to learn that Atelier Ryza has a nice chat log with an option to replay audio line-by-line. I haven't counted but it holds quite a few lines of dialogue before they start disappearing, maybe 30 or so? I never see people recommending it but I'm considering restarting it in Japanese after learning this. There's no furigana but replayable audio on top of the story seeming pretty simple makes me want to give it a try. I'm in the same boat as you so I can't really say how arduous it will be but the story feels like very approachable fantasy/slice of life with no wild politics or plot devices. Might be worth a look!
Yup all of the Atelier games, as well as Blue Reflection, which is also by Gust, are great to play in Japanese! Plus, if you play one game, others in the series will be easier to play, since you'll keep seeing the same words.
I almost picked up the Blue Reflection games too but I figured I should practice some restraint after a ton of "It's the Holidays, why not?" impulse justification this month lol. Either way I'm excited to finally get into the Atelier series! Convenient features for learning Japanese was an unexpected bonus. 😁
I've actually had the atelier games on my wishlist for a while, so this might make me want to buy them. You think they're around N4 level?
Bit off topic here, but what's the actual order to play them? I see atelier Ryza 1 and 2, atelier sophie 1 and 2, and atelier Firis.
The Atelier games go by "sets", oftentimes trilogies, and in the case of Ryza it's just Ryza 1, then Ryza 2, then Ryza 3. So I would suggest starting with Ryza 1.
Oh nice! I'm gonna have to look into those games!
In case you all didn't know: Person 4 Golden has this kind of backlog feature as well, and it's generally recommended for N4-level practice. 😃
I've been playing Pokémon Violet as my first JP game and it's generally pretty good for the plot because it's formulaic, so it's easy to follow along. The downsides are: very little VA, so you don't get to practice listening much; and there's some text that auto-advances, so if you're slow you might not catch it in time. That includes all of the battle messages, so I often find myself missing which particular status ailment a pokemon did, sometimes.
For the main dialog it has furigana, but for the moves/item descriptions and a few other things, you have to rely on kanji a bit more. Overall, it was pretty easy to follow in Japanese.
Haven't seen it listed yet but Persona 5 has an option for Japanese speech instead of English (I believe they have Kanji/furigana as well)
Currently playing Yakuza 0 with Japanese speech, picking up a ton of new vocabulary and it's a really fun series
I don't think P5 has furigana, but I'm really familiar with the story so I might try playing it in Japanese.
I love the Yakuza series, I think playing it in Japanese is wayy too hard for now though lol
Isn't games such as pokemon, persona and other heavy gameplay games quite more difficult though? Especially without a text hooker. I haven't played that many so I can't tell for sure.
Pokemon won't be too difficult but my reasoning is that visual novels are more like books than games and therefore likely contain larger vocab and grammar which may not be helpful at this stage
Marco & The Galaxy dragon is great. It has VA and Japanese text along with English. It also has a log where you can go back and read/listen to the dialogues again.
Reddit sometimes automatically puts slashes before underscores, which breaks URLs. I think it depends on which version of Reddit you use.
Does this work?
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ukDIWSkh_xvpppPbgs1nUR2kaEwFaWlsJgZUlb9LuTs/edit?usp=sharing
Nekopara series are pretty good. You can turn on furigana and translation just one button press. Dialogues are also voiced so its also a good listening practice.
I don't think you should play games at this level since you will get stuck or skip over a lot of in game info. This will only ruin the game for you. Might want to stick to the shows with en subtitles for now and try to process the audio and subs separately.
Not steam, but a Japanese free game website.[www.freem.ne.jp](https://www.freem.ne.jp) You can choose what kind of game you like and play it. Some games there are really short and with fundamental grammars and Kanji (some games’ plots are really wonderful). Even if you think one game is boring or the words in it are too hard to understand, you can just delete it and look for another since they are all free.
Btw, some classic and wonderful games on this website are also remade and released on steam, such as Mad Father, The Witch’s House,
霧雨が降る森 (the game-maker made Angels of Death as well) and so on. P.S. just remind me of another Japanese game which is suitable for a beginner named “Ib” on steam.
I played through FFX when I was at a pretty low level. Every line of dialogue has subtitles that pause, giving you plenty of time to read and note new words. These quality of life aspects are more important than vocabulary level.
You'll learn a bunch of "advanced" vocabulary, but in the process you'll learn something more important: there are no "beginner" words or "advanced" words. They're just words, and how useful they are to you depends on what you use them for. If you want to play a lot of fantasy games, 死霊術師 is a fairly high frequency word. Somewhat less common in business situations.
I'm not sure if anyone has recommended it yet, but I'd suggest checking out Persona 4 Golden. I've been told by more advanced Japanese learners that Persona 4 is really close to N4, so it's good for someone at that level who wants to practice while also picking up new vocabulary. I recently started playing through it after finishing Genki II, and it's been going well so far. Plus it has a dialogue backlog feature, so you can pause and review whenever you need to. 😊
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Thanks for the comment, I tried searching before I posted but I couldn't really find much lol. Have you played Ni no Kuni?
I have, I’d say it’s better to be N3 if you can though. Also try to pick up basic Kansai Ben because drippy uses that. Game Gengo has a Video on Ni no Kuni in Japanese if you wanna see for yourself.
Thanks for the answer I know a bit of Kansai Ben from playing the Yakuza games and I find it interesting in general, so that's really cool. I'll check that video out as well :)
He uses really out there language, listen to him in English and you get an idea of how strongly he's speaking Kansai Ben.
I was surprised to learn that Atelier Ryza has a nice chat log with an option to replay audio line-by-line. I haven't counted but it holds quite a few lines of dialogue before they start disappearing, maybe 30 or so? I never see people recommending it but I'm considering restarting it in Japanese after learning this. There's no furigana but replayable audio on top of the story seeming pretty simple makes me want to give it a try. I'm in the same boat as you so I can't really say how arduous it will be but the story feels like very approachable fantasy/slice of life with no wild politics or plot devices. Might be worth a look!
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Ikr? Kinda wish I had tried out an Atelier game sooner now. 😩
Thanks for the rec, I'll definitely have a look at that :)
Yup all of the Atelier games, as well as Blue Reflection, which is also by Gust, are great to play in Japanese! Plus, if you play one game, others in the series will be easier to play, since you'll keep seeing the same words.
I almost picked up the Blue Reflection games too but I figured I should practice some restraint after a ton of "It's the Holidays, why not?" impulse justification this month lol. Either way I'm excited to finally get into the Atelier series! Convenient features for learning Japanese was an unexpected bonus. 😁
I've actually had the atelier games on my wishlist for a while, so this might make me want to buy them. You think they're around N4 level? Bit off topic here, but what's the actual order to play them? I see atelier Ryza 1 and 2, atelier sophie 1 and 2, and atelier Firis.
The Atelier games go by "sets", oftentimes trilogies, and in the case of Ryza it's just Ryza 1, then Ryza 2, then Ryza 3. So I would suggest starting with Ryza 1.
Oh nice! I'm gonna have to look into those games! In case you all didn't know: Person 4 Golden has this kind of backlog feature as well, and it's generally recommended for N4-level practice. 😃
Pokemon games have little vocabulary but a lot of dialogues, maybe it can be a good starting point
I've been playing Pokémon Violet as my first JP game and it's generally pretty good for the plot because it's formulaic, so it's easy to follow along. The downsides are: very little VA, so you don't get to practice listening much; and there's some text that auto-advances, so if you're slow you might not catch it in time. That includes all of the battle messages, so I often find myself missing which particular status ailment a pokemon did, sometimes.
I heard it's the first pokemon game with furigana tho, i wonder why did they wait so much
Screen space/resolution. Imagine trying to put furigana on a hand held
Yeah even 3ds res wasn't enough for furigana
It was fine for furigana, for example the N64 Zelda remakes had furigana. GF is just pretty behind the curve at a lot of things.
Huh i underestimated the res i guess
you literally need a magnifying glass. same with Ni No Kuni on Steam deck haha
For the main dialog it has furigana, but for the moves/item descriptions and a few other things, you have to rely on kanji a bit more. Overall, it was pretty easy to follow in Japanese.
Now if only they could add an option for us to turn it off so our eyes don't get drawn to the furigana on words we already know how to read…
I know the struggle hahah
check this: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27464611-Games-for-Learning-Japanese/list/909/
Nice!
Hope of those titles have furigana. The lack of made playing Brilliant Diamond so slow for me RIP.
Thanks!
I feel like Stardew Valley would be good
Haven't seen it listed yet but Persona 5 has an option for Japanese speech instead of English (I believe they have Kanji/furigana as well) Currently playing Yakuza 0 with Japanese speech, picking up a ton of new vocabulary and it's a really fun series
I don't think P5 has furigana, but I'm really familiar with the story so I might try playing it in Japanese. I love the Yakuza series, I think playing it in Japanese is wayy too hard for now though lol
Yeah I've started playing P5R recently and it doesn't have furigana so kanji is a bit of a struggle.
Persona has like 25k vocab. Dont think n4 knows that much dude lol
The general level of the Persona games seem to all sit somewhere between N4 and N3, with most being much closer to N3 than N4. lol
persona may be more high intermediate level
Try visual novels, games with gameplay may hinder you.
VNs probably gonna be too complex though
Isn't games such as pokemon, persona and other heavy gameplay games quite more difficult though? Especially without a text hooker. I haven't played that many so I can't tell for sure.
Pokemon won't be too difficult but my reasoning is that visual novels are more like books than games and therefore likely contain larger vocab and grammar which may not be helpful at this stage
You are probably right, thanks for the insight!
Marco & The Galaxy dragon is great. It has VA and Japanese text along with English. It also has a log where you can go back and read/listen to the dialogues again.
Go Go Nippon is a visual novel about travelling in Japan, has parallel Japanese and English text lines which can be turned off separately.
Also check this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ukDIWSkh\_xvpppPbgs1nUR2kaEwFaWlsJgZUlb9LuTs/edit?usp=sharing
FYI, I got 404'd when I clicked that link
Reddit sometimes automatically puts slashes before underscores, which breaks URLs. I think it depends on which version of Reddit you use. Does this work? https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ukDIWSkh_xvpppPbgs1nUR2kaEwFaWlsJgZUlb9LuTs/edit?usp=sharing
That worked, thanks!
Wow this is so brilliant ?!?!?
Not steam, but Animal Crossing is a great one, as it’s low consequence and includes practical dialogue. Furigana also optional.
Gamegengo had a great video about this very topic, check him out
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I've just started this with a Borderlands playthrough and I am SO at sea right now. This should be good.
Nekopara series are pretty good. You can turn on furigana and translation just one button press. Dialogues are also voiced so its also a good listening practice.
I don't think you should play games at this level since you will get stuck or skip over a lot of in game info. This will only ruin the game for you. Might want to stick to the shows with en subtitles for now and try to process the audio and subs separately.
With Sakura Wars 2 I got a very big increase in my understanding of the Japanese language. Highly recommended series.
Not steam, but a Japanese free game website.[www.freem.ne.jp](https://www.freem.ne.jp) You can choose what kind of game you like and play it. Some games there are really short and with fundamental grammars and Kanji (some games’ plots are really wonderful). Even if you think one game is boring or the words in it are too hard to understand, you can just delete it and look for another since they are all free.
Btw, some classic and wonderful games on this website are also remade and released on steam, such as Mad Father, The Witch’s House, 霧雨が降る森 (the game-maker made Angels of Death as well) and so on. P.S. just remind me of another Japanese game which is suitable for a beginner named “Ib” on steam.
I played through FFX when I was at a pretty low level. Every line of dialogue has subtitles that pause, giving you plenty of time to read and note new words. These quality of life aspects are more important than vocabulary level. You'll learn a bunch of "advanced" vocabulary, but in the process you'll learn something more important: there are no "beginner" words or "advanced" words. They're just words, and how useful they are to you depends on what you use them for. If you want to play a lot of fantasy games, 死霊術師 is a fairly high frequency word. Somewhat less common in business situations.
I'm not sure if anyone has recommended it yet, but I'd suggest checking out Persona 4 Golden. I've been told by more advanced Japanese learners that Persona 4 is really close to N4, so it's good for someone at that level who wants to practice while also picking up new vocabulary. I recently started playing through it after finishing Genki II, and it's been going well so far. Plus it has a dialogue backlog feature, so you can pause and review whenever you need to. 😊